In the Disney Pixar film, Inside Out, we get to journey inside the mind of 11 year-old Riley
Anderson as she wrestles with all the conflicting emotions that comes from a stressful move from a simple, stable life in rural Minnesota to a hurried, unknown life in San Francisco. Chief among these personified emotions is Joy, who has dominated Riley’s childhood until now. Joy and Riley’s other emotions (fear, disgust and anger) have never quite figured out what to do with Sadness, portrayed as a despondent blue teardrop shaped blob (show video here). Riley’s other emotions struggle to cope with the cross-country move, and they struggle with what to do with sadness. Riley does her best to suppress it. She wants the move to go smoothly for mom and dad, so she puts on a happy face, and inside, Joy attempts to keep Sadness away from the “core memories,” and through a swirl of misguided intentions and an amusing struggle, Joy and Sadness both end up outside of “head”quarters. Joy does her best to control the situation. It is an interesting interplay between the emotions, especially of joy and sadness in the life of an 11 year-old. Quite expected for an 11 year-old. The problem is too many of us who have grown up don’t understand the interplay of joy and sadness, nor do we always understand the positive role sadness can play in our lives. It’s true for non-believers, and may I dare say, it can be especially pronounced among those who call themselves disciples of Jesus Christ.
Theologian Ben Myers writes, “In the Protestant West today, smiling has become a moral imperative. The smile is regarded as the objective externalisation of a well-ordered life. Sadness is moral failure.” Myers speaks the truth. We save our best faces for Sunday morning; we hide terrible secrets and unspeakable suffering behind the veneer of a firm handshake and a response of “just fine” when asked how we’re doing. Our smiles reflect our faith in the cult of Christian happiness.
It’s no wonder we do that. We’re taught that from the time we’re born, aren’t we? Didn’t our parents tell us when we were sad or crying to “Cheer up,” and not to be sad? And, we teach our children to sing “Put on a Happy Face:”
Grey skies are gonna clear up
Put on a happy face
Brush off the clouds and cheer up
Put on a happy face
Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy
It's not your style
You'll look so good that
You'll be glad ya' decided to smile
The song goes on to say:
Pick out a pleasant outlook
Stick out that noble chin
Wipe out that "full of doubt" look
Slap on a happy grin
And spread sunshine
All over the place
Just put on a happy face
In western culture, both within Christianity and without, we’ve bought the lie that joy trumps all, and sadness needs to be suppressed. Nothing could be further from the truth. So the wisdom writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us this morning with his own poetry of life. He reminds us there is an appropriate time for everything under heaven, and he sets out to establish the rhythm that is life. Were we to read all of chapter three we would discover from his writing that it is God who has established the patterns of life, and God has created us as emotional beings. God has given us the emotion of joy, of anger, of fear…and yes, of sadness. The writer reminds us there is a time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to grieve and a time to dance. The wisdom writer counsels us to stop straining against the limits of life and find the real joy and beauty that exists in the daily living of life with all its ups and downs. It’s a lesson we do well to learn.
Sadness is a healthy emotion. Sure, it’s viewed as a negative emotion, but research has shown that negative emotions, dealt with in healthy ways leads to greater health. Our problem is we confuse sadness with depression. Unlike depression, sadness is natural and is generally connected with identifiable experiences of pain or loss, or even a meaningful moment of connection or joy that makes us value our lives. Depression, on the other hand, arises without a clear explanation or can result from an unhealthy reaction to a painful event, where we either steel ourselves against our natural reaction to the event or get overwhelmed by it. When we’re in a depressed state, we often feel numb or deadened to our emotions. We may have feelings of shame, self-blame or self-hatred, all of which are likely to interfere with a constructive behavior, instead creating a lack of energy and vitality. Sadness, on the other hand, can be awakening.
Sadness is not the absence of joy, nor is it a stubborn refusal to “put on a happy face.” There are times in life when no other emotion will do. Jesus knew this, too. Actually, nowhere in scripture do we find Jesus laughing, but very straightforwardly, we do find a passage that says Jesus wept. That’s not to say Jesus was never joyful. We can believe that he was, in fact, full of joy, but Scripture calls Jesus “the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Jesus—who knew better than anyone the promise of eternal joy—was not a jolly messenger of cosmic bliss, but a “suffering servant.” The ancient icons never show a smiling Christ. He gazes back at us with a look far beyond all happiness and frivolity. It is the gaze of pure joy, tinged with grief: it is as different from our plastered Sunday smiles as a lover’s laughter is from a supermodel’s dead-eyed stare.
What healthy role can sadness play in our lives? First, sadness can bring us an awareness of our own sinfulness. The sadness and grief of repentance is the necessary prerequisite to the joy of restoration. As we stand facing the beginning of the season of Lent, I remind us that Ash Wednesday always precede Easter Sunday. We come Ash Wednesday to mourn our sins, to be sorry for our sins, to be saddened by them, and that necessarily leads us to repentance. Repentance restores to us the joy of our salvation.
Second, sadness helps us mourn so we can move on. Life is nothing without vision. Sadness can help bring clarity to the circumstances and situations of our lives. Inside Out gives us a glimpse of how this works in our lives. In the film, Riley had an imaginary friend named Bing Bong. As Joy and Sadness make their way through Riley’s long-term memory they come across Bing Bong, and he consents to help them get back to “head”quarters. At one point, Bing Bong becomes sad because he’s lost his “real” friend, Riley. Joy goes overboard trying to cheer Bing Bong up, but to no avail. But sadness, as she simply sits and listens—is simply present with Bing Bong—he discovers the strength and resolve to continue helping Joy and Sadness on their journey. He couldn’t go on until he was able to acknowledge his grief. Sadness helps us acknowledge our grief, so we can reclaim the vision of life ahead of us.
Third, sadness gives us the ability to enter into the suffering of others. Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” It is in mourning, in a deep sadness for the loss of some person or happiness, that we can find comfort. We are blessed that God will comfort us in our faithfulness—this we hold onto with certain hope. But it’s also in our mourning and acknowledgement of our sadness that we can better empathize with others—that we can be more fully present to others in their sadness and comfort them with love. If we allow it, our sadness can widen our hearts. And to have a widened heart is to be infinitely blessed.
As our eyes are opened to the plight of the world, our focus starts to shift away from our own worries and desires and onto the needs of other people. We find ourselves surrounded by people to grieve with, and terrible situations to grieve over. Jesus’ grief in the gospels is our example. He wept at the terrible suffering he saw all around him and at the hardness of people’s hearts. As we are conformed to Christ’s image, we weep with him. To meet the sadness of the world with easy answers or optimistic platitudes is not only insensitive, but also an affront to the sadness of Jesus, who always weeps with those who weep—and his grief is no less bitter than theirs.
Fourth, sadness reminds us this world is not our home. In a fallen world as Christians, we accept that lasting joy will not come in this life. We can and often do experience great joys, pleasures and happiness, yet even these are shadowed with sadness and loss as we age and accept that things will never be quite the same. I’m reminded of this every time I go to the gym these days. I have aches and pains in places I never used to have aches and pains. As much as I desire, I can’t do at 52 what I did at 22 or 32 or even 42. And, yes, that makes me sad!
C.S. Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain that this keeps us from forgetting we are but pilgrims journeying toward our true home with God:
“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
What is sadness but a calling to mind that things are not quite right? Sadness is a reminder that we are not home yet?
Finally, I think sadness is a way we come to experience mercy. Our suffering allows us the joy of knowing we are not alone. It’s what shows us that we need God, and in needing and receiving God, allows us to love others and be loved by them. And, in this receiving and giving of love—in realizing we are not alone—we have hope. In the film, it’s only once Riley is able to acknowledge her sadness to her parents that her parents are able to share their own sadness that they, too, miss their old life in Minnesota. It’s only then that Riley is able to rest in the love of her parents. It’s at this moment when the characters, Joy and Sadness, create a core memory of dual emotions: one with joy and sadness, hope and loss. Watch this clip, and see what I mean.
Sadness is truly one of the greatest gifts we are ever given by God, and we should be thankful. In our sadness, we can experience the joy of knowing God’s unending mercy and love for us. As William Blake writes in the Auguries of Innocence:
“Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine,
Under every grief and pine,
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so,
We were made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know,
Through the world we safely go.”
